DEBKAFile reports that another UK institution has decided to boycott Israelis:

The UCU meeting in Manchester, northern England, passed a motion to boycott Israeli academic institutions – without admitting it as such.Members were urged to “reflect on whether it is appropriate to maintain their links with Israeli institutions” in the light of “the humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel.”http://debka.com/headline.php?hid=5303

I guess this proves UCU’s moral objection to the “brutal collective punishment imposed by Israel”. Hold on, am I in some Bizzaro-World-of-Irony? Does this action not equate to an implementation of collective punishment upon all Israeli academics?

 The issue is all the more deliciously ironic for those of us familiar with Israeli academia. Like their neoMarxist cousins in the West, Israeli academics are mostly leftist peaceniks, some are fervent anti-Zionists (yes, even in the land of Zion people are confused).

Some of these academics are more fervent in their leftism than those in the West. Let’s take Prof. Ze’ev Sternhell as an example:

He wrote this call for a civil war twenty years ago (in the late Davar daily), but his pen did not cease to drip the familiar venom that became his hallmark. In May 2001, a year into the “second Intifada”, in the height of the suicide bombings, this time in Ha’aretz, he wrote: “Many Israelis, possibly the majority of voters, do not doubt the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories proper. If the Palestinians had a little sense, they would have concentrated their struggle against the settlements and would not hurt women and children, fire rockets on Gilo, Nachal Oz and Sderot, or plant explosives on the Western side of the Green Line. In this manner, the Palestinians would themselves draft the solution that will be reached in any case.” http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Shaul%20Sadka%20-%20Sternhell%20Israel%20Prize.htm

Here we have an Israeli professor calling upon the enemy to target civilian enclaves within Israel. Sderot is a town within Israel proper, not in Gaza or Judea – in no way a “settlement”. He says that they should “concentrate the struggle on settlements and not hurt women and children”. Apparently the women and children of Gilo, Nachal Oz & Sderot… are not women and children… (!?)

Or maybe he believes that Hamas & Fatah have flesh-avoiding missles, similar to the type Israel’s detractors believe Israel does (sorry guys, they don’t exist).

Let’s delve deeper into the bizarro world of Israeli acade:

(IsraelNN.com) A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers’ committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose. The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that “the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals.” 

The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences – just as organized military rape would have done.”

  The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers’ eyes.The paper was published by the Hebrew University’s Shaine Center, based on the recommendation of a Hebrew University professors’ committee headed by Dr. Zali Gurevitch.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124674

NOT RAPING as a means of dehumanization…Only in Israel…Yet, even these professors, with their “interesting” notions, will be boycotted (THANK G*D! FOR THE BOYCOTT IN THIS CASE!) for nothing more than their alma matter affiliations.

Israel is anything but of one mind. A majority win in an Israeli election is almost unheard of. Instead, many parties get votes and they then must form coalitions so that bills can be passed. In one sense it is the truest form of democracy for it is a direct representation of the fragmented, all-over-the-place opinions one finds in a pluralistic open democracy. It also makes governing hard… But I digress – the point is, such a boycott punishes the students & professors whom voted for the left-wing parties and the Arab parties (yes, Arabs run and then win seats in the Knesset, only in Israel!). It also punishes those that voted and/or support ”right-wing-left-wing-parties”, like Sharon’s/Olmert’s Kadima Party which ran as a right wing party but then evolved into a leftist party willing to make concessions while rockets fly into Sderot and Ashkelon.

The Middle East is so rife with corruption, so filled with tyrants and injustices that one must wonder why this University singled out Israel. The government of Egypt maintains a backwards land where less than 50% of women are literate and gential mutiliation is standard-fare; the government of Saudi Arabia forbids non-Muslims from entering Mecca, they forbid women from driving or travelling without a male chaperone, they also punish women who have been raped; in Iran homosexuals & those who speak out against the ruling dictators are hung; Iran also occupies & is attempting an outright overthrow of Lebanon through it’s Hezbollah forces; Turkey is no friend to the Kurds; and Jordan has still not answered for the masacre of thousands (if not tens of thousands) during Jordan’s Black September… BUT all that somehow pails in comparison to ISRAEL?

Israel? The nation that suffers disproportionally from Arab attacks (proportion is a word that relates to SCALE, not to NUMBER. The Arabs outnumber and lose people on a lower scale than Israeli Jews.)? The nation that offered the Palestinians 100% of Gaza, 97% of West Bank, 100% of East Jerusalem & 3-5% of Israel-proper? The nation that has not instigated one war in its entire history (not even the Arabs contest that!)? The nation that can defeat all of its enemies in a fortnight but instead allows its own civilians to die so the world can look at it in a less critical light?

For all the problems of the Middle East it is astonishing that Israel is even being discussed.

Alas, this “anti-Israel” yipyap is but a politically correct means of anti-Sematism. How else does one explain the boycotting of professors who are ANTI-ZIONISM, some who are ANTI-ISRAEL? In this bizarro-World we live in the “anti-Zionist crowd” can ban all “Israel-Jews” without being anti “Israel-Jew”… I just don’t understand how.

After thought:

Hopefully this cancer does not spread and fizzles out like that “divestment from Israel” campaign. How does one divest from Israel anyways? Windows NT, firewall, anti-virus, cell-phones, drip irrigation, biotech ops… All develped in Israel… I say GO AHEAD, find yourself a cave and a club and by all means, divest…grunt, grunt…

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, Political Byline, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Wingless – Octuplet Case Raises Ethics Issue, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.